CAFFIE'S ANSWER
Although Saniel did not build any false hopes on Caffie's reply, he went
to see him the next afternoon at the same hour.
As before, he waited some time after ringing the bell. At last he heard
a slow step within.
"Who is there?" Caffie asked.
As soon as Saniel answered, the door was opened.
"As I do not like to be disturbed in the evening by troublesome people, I
do not always open the door," Caffie said. "But I have a signal for my
clients so that I may know them. After ringing, knock three times on the
door."
During this explanation they entered Caffie's office.
"Have you done anything about my affair?" Saniel asked, after a moment,
as Caffie seemed disinclined to open the conversation.
"Yes, my dear sir. I have been running about all the morning for you.
I never neglect my clients; their affairs are mine."
He paused.
"Well?" Saniel said.
Caffie put on an expression of despair.
"What did I tell you, my dear sir? Do you remember? Do me the honor to
believe that a man of my experience does not speak lightly. What I
foresaw has come to pass. Everywhere I received the same reply. The
risk is too great; no one would take it."
"Not even for a large interest?"
"Not even for a large interest; there is so much competition in your
profession. As for me, I believe in your future, and I have proved it by
my proposition; but, unfortunately, I am only an intermediary, and not
the lender of money."
Caffie emphasized the words, "my proposition," and underlined them with a
glance; but Saniel did not appear to understand.
"And the upholsterer's summons?" he asked.
"You may be easy on that point. I have attended to it. Your landlord,
to whom he owes rent, will interfere, and your creditor must indemnify
him before going farther. Will he submit? We shall see. If he does, we
shall defend ourselves on some other ground. I do not say victoriously,
but in a way to gain time."
"How much time?"
"That, my dear sir, I do not know; the whole thing depends upon our
adversary. But what do you mean by 'how much time?'--eternity?"
"I mean until April."
"That is eternity. Do you believe that you will be able to free yourself
in April? If you have expectations founded on something substantial, you
should tell me what they are, my dear sir."
This question was put with such an air of benevolence, that Saniel was
taken in by it.
"I have no guarantee," he said. "But, on the other hand, it is of the
utmost importance to me that I should have this length of time. As I
have explained to you, I am about to pass two examinations; they will
last three months, and in March, or, at the latest, in April, I shall be
a physician of the hospitals, and fellow of the Faculty. In that case I
should then offer a surface to the lenders, that would permit you,
without doubt, to find the sum necessary to pay Jardine, whatever
expenses there may be, and your fee."
As he spoke, Saniel saw that he was wrong in thus committing himself, but
he continued to the end.
"I should be unworthy of your confidence, my dear sir," Caffie replied,
"if I encouraged you with the idea that we could gain so much time.
Whatever it costs me--and it costs me much, I assure you--I must tell you
that it is impossible, radically impossible; a few days, yes, or a few
weeks, but that is all."
"Well, obtain a few weeks," Saniel said, rising, "that will be
something."
"And afterward?"
"We shall see."
"My dear sir, do not go. You would not believe how much I am touched by
your position; I think only of you. When I learned that I could not find
the sum you desire, I paid a friendly visit to my young client of whom I
spoke to you--"
"The one who received a superior education in a fashionable convent?"
"Exactly; and I asked her what she would think of a young doctor, full of
talent, future professor of the Faculty, actually considered already a
savant of the first order, handsome--because you are handsome, my dear
sir, and it is no flattery to say this--in good health, a peasant by
birth, who presented himself as a husband. She appeared flattered, I
tell you frankly. But immediately afterward she said, 'And the child?'
To which I replied that you were too good, too noble, too generous, not
to have the indulgence of superior men, who accept an involuntary fault
with serenity. Did I go too far?"
He did not wait for an answer.
"No?" he went on. "Exactly. The child was present, for the mother
watches over it with a solicitude that promises much for the future, and
I examined it leisurely. It is very delicate, my dear sir, and like its
father. The poor baby! I doubt if you, with all your skill, can make it
live. If it should die, as it is to be feared it will, it would not
injure your reputation. You can give it care, but not life."
"Speaking of health," interrupted Saniel, who did not wish to reply, "did
you do what I advised about yourself?"
"Not yet. The chemists of this quarter are only licensed cutthroats; but
I am going this evening to see one of my clients who is a chemist, and he
will deal honestly with me."
"I will see you again, then."
"When you wish, my dear sir; when you have reflected. You have the
password."
Before leaving home Saniel gave his key to the concierge, so that on her
arrival Phillis might go immediately to his rooms. On his return the
concierge told him that "madame" was up-stairs, and when he rang the
bell, Phillis opened the door.
"Well?" she asked in a trembling voice, before he had time to enter.
"It is as I told you yesterday; he has found no one."
She clasped him in a long, passionate embrace.
"And the upholsterer?"
"Caffie has promised to gain some time for me."
While speaking, they entered the office. A fire burned on the hearth,
and an inviting dinner was on the table. Saniel looked at it in
surprise.
"I have set the table, you see; I am going to dine with you."
And throwing herself in his arms:
"Knowing Caffie better than you do, I knew what his answer would be, and
I did not wish you to be alone on your return. I made an excuse for not
dining with mamma."
"But this chicken?"
"We must have a piece de resistance."
"This fire, and these candles?"
"There, that is the end of my economies. I should have been so happy if
they had been less miserable and more useful."
As on the previous evening, they sat before the fire, and she began to
talk of various things in order to distract him. But what their lips did
not say, their eyes, on meeting, expressed with more intensity than words
could do.
It was Saniel who suddenly betrayed his preoccupation.
"Your brother studied Caffie well," he said, as if speaking to himself.
"He did, indeed!"
"He is certainly the most thorough rascal that I have ever met."
"He proposed something infamous, I am sure."
"He proposed that I should marry."
"I suspected that."
"This is the reason why he refuses to lend me the money. I was foolish
enough to tell him frankly just how I am situated, and how important it
is for me to be free until April. He hopes that I shall be so pushed
that I will accept one of the women whom he has proposed to me. With the
knife at my throat, I should have to yield."
"And these women?" she asked, not daring to look at him.
"Do not be alarmed, you have nothing to fear. One is the drunken widow
of a butcher, and the other is a young girl who has a baby."
"He dares to propose such women to a man like you!"
And Saniel repeated all that Caffie had said to him about these two
women.
"What a monster he is!" Phillis said.
"While he was telling me these things I thought of what you said--that if
some one killed him, it would be no more than he deserved."
"That is perfectly true."
"Nothing would have been easier than for me to have made away with him.
He had the toothache, and when he showed me his teeth I could easily have
strangled him. We were alone, and a miserable diabetic, such as he is,
who has not more than six months to live, I am sure, could not have
resisted a grasp like this. I could take his keys from his pocket, open
his safe, and take the thirty, forty, sixty thousand francs that I saw
heaped up there. The devil take me if it were ever discovered. A doctor
does not strangle his patients, he poisons them. He kills them
scientifically, not brutally."
"People who have no conscience can do such things; but for us they are
impossible."
"I assure you it is not conscience that would have restrained me."
"The fear of remorse, if I may use an ugly word."
"But intelligent persons have no remorse, my dear child, because they
reason before the deed, and not after. Before acting they weigh the pros
and cons, and know what the consequences of their actions will be to
others as well as to themselves. If this previous examination proves to
them that for some reason or other they may act, they will always be
calm, assured that they will feel no remorse, which is only the reproach
of conscience."
"Without doubt what you say is to the point, but it is impossible for me
to accept it. If I have never committed crimes, I have often been
foolish and have committed faults, many of them deliberately, after the
examination of which you speak. I should have been, according to you,
perfectly placid and free from the reproach of conscience; however, the
next morning I woke unhappy, tormented, often overwhelmed, and unable to
stifle the mysterious voice that accused me."
"And in whose name did it speak, this voice, more vague than mysterious?"
"In the name of my conscience, evidently."
"'Evidently' is too much, and you would be puzzled if called upon to
demonstrate this evidence; whereas, nothing is more uncertain and elusive
than the thing that is called conscience, which is in reality only an
affair of environment and of education."
"I do not understand."
"Does your conscience tell you it is a crime to love me?"
"No, decidedly."
"You see, then, that you have a personal way of understanding what is
good and bad, which is not that of our country, where it is admitted,
from the religious and from the social point of view, that a young girl
is guilty when she has a lover. Of course, you see, also, that
conscience is a bad weighing-machine, since each one, in order to make it
work, uses a weight that he has himself manufactured."
"However it is, you did right not to strangle Cafflie."
"Whom you, yourself, have condemned to death."
"By the hand of justice, whether human or divine; but not by yours, any
more than by Florentin's or mine, although we know better than any one
that he does not deserve any mercy."
"And you see I foresaw your objections, as I did not tighten his cravat."
"Happily."
"Is it necessary to say 'happily'?"